


Scarlet Hood and the White Wolf

by tisfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Little Red Riding Hood Fusion, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M, Scarlet Hood, White Wolf - Freeform, grandmother's house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25883296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: The White Wolf has a mission to accomplish...And so does his victim.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Wanda Maximoff
Comments: 12
Kudos: 40





	Scarlet Hood and the White Wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowerofthewolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerofthewolf/gifts).



The White Wolf peered down his scope, targeted on a splash of scarlet. “Package en route,” he muttered, avoiding the temptation to touch his ear while he talked. Sloppy habits made for a sloppy job.

“Over the hills and through the woods, to grandmother’s house,” his handler said. “We’ve got eyes on the house. Prevent the package delivery at all costs.”

“Yep,” the White Wolf said, spitting out his toothpick. He pressed against the scope, watching as the target practically skipped down the path, basket under one arm.

The target was clad in a scarlet cape, hooded, that went practically to her ankles; brown boots peeped out from around the hem. The wind was a little unpredictable, flapping the sides of the cloak. The trees were thick, creaking as they swayed.

Good chance of a storm, the White Wolf thought, feeling the ache in his arm and shoulder where they’d been reconstructed after a bad mission in Switzerland. It shouldn’t affect this mission, but he’d be holed up in his safe house for a few days after, chewing vicodin and reading crappy magazines from the 60s. Hydra didn’t update its reading material very often.

At least they stocked the good drugs and reasonably decent food.

He turned his attention back to the target.

“What’s in the package?” the White Wolf wondered. He’d never wondered that before. It wasn’t in the nature of an assassin to wonder about the target; who, what, why. All he needed to know is _where they were_.

He squinted, bringing the target back into focus. Started the countdown in his head. Ten seconds until impending death.

Eight… seven…

He sucked in a breath, let it all out until there was no air in his chest.

Six… five… four…

The storm broke overhead. A few drops scattered across his arm. One raindrop dripped down the lens of his scope.

The target raised her head, and like a complete dumbass, pushed her hood back as if to see the clouds and scold them.

Three… two...

She turned.

She looked right at him, although there should be no way that she could possibly see him, camouflage in his hide, so far away.

But she looked right up at him, green eyes witchlike in the half-light, as if the storm was her friend and she was made stronger by it.

Like she knew him. She waved at him. Signalled. 

Something spluttered and flared in his mind, an image, a word, a picture. Something.

He pulled the trigger.

...

And missed.

Not entirely, he was too good to miss the entire target. The basket fell to the ground with a sprinkle of blood, scarlet as the cloak she wore. The target turned, bolted into the woods and within seconds, had vanished into the trees.

“ _Fuck_.”

“Report, Soldier.”

“Target evaded. Package is--”

He almost said it, almost admitted it, that the package was down, just there, accessible.

“Pursue, Soldier.”

“Copy that.”

The White Wolf left the sniper’s rifle in his hide. He’d be back to get it, and it didn’t carry well for a dash through thick woods. He had two handguns and a dozen or more knives. He did stop for the package, before engaging in tracking the target.

She couldn’t escape him for long, bleeding the way she was.

He would find her.

And get her to explain what she’d done to him.

* * *

The storm kept Wanda mostly hidden as she ran. She ditched the cloak right away because she wasn’t _entirely_ stupid.

She was a little bit stupid, in that she clung to the stubborn belief that Hydra’s casting could be undone, and more, that she was the one who could undo it.

But first, she needed to get him out of their clutches. Which meant setting up the whole drag-and-drop. She’d been taking packages for “Grandmother” for months now, trying to be more and more obvious every time, and her contact had been using that information to set up very small, mostly annoying traps and tricks.

Hydra was extremely dense, and they’d finally had to blow up a damn building to get their attention. Mostly it had been Hydra members who were killed, but Wanda flinched about the fact that there had, in fact, been some collateral damage. Keeping Hydra from killing hundreds of people with a wide-range death spell had probably been worth the eleven casualties, but it didn’t keep Wanda from running down the list of names and faces as some sort of penance before she could sleep.

“If we’re not willing to take risks, maybe next time, nobody gets saved,” her team leader had said.

It didn’t help. She was certain it hadn’t helped the families of the men and women who’d been accidentally killed in the blast. And the people who were saved? Well, it’s not like they _knew_.

The Big Bad White Wolf was behind her. She couldn’t hear him, or see him, but she could sense him, the way he was relentless.

She ran.

He paced her, somehow, keeping just out of sight.

And yet, she knew he was getting closer.

Not much further to go before she’d reach her safe house, and the dubious security of the wolf-trap she’d laid for him.

If he would do her the favor of falling into it, that would be great.

Close--

Closer--

Wanda leaped over the trap, pushing magical energy behind her, all but flying.

She hit the landing pad and turned to watch. If the White Wolf eluded the trap, she was dead anyway. She might as well see it coming.

He didn’t change course.

He moved like he had places to go and people to kill, striding across the clearing, knife in hand. She appeared trapped against the building, gasping and terrified -- all of which were true. And he had no reason to suspect she could fly. She gathered power, scarlet and smoke, at her fingertips. If he came closer to her, she would fly straight up.

That was the plan.

And then he walked right into the trap.

He didn’t scream as he fell, and he barely made a grunt when he hit the bottom. The wards went up, sizzling and yellow to form a dome over his head.

He got to his feet, utterly silent, and punched the ward.

Mistake.

The magical energy reflected back at him, snapping, popping. If he’d been a normal human, he might have broken his arm.

“I would just… settle down,” Wanda advised.

He didn’t say anything, just stared up at her with fierce, ice-blue eyes. Somehow entirely opposite to her scarlet magic.

“It will be all right,” she said. “We’re going to help you.”

He didn’t say anything.

* * *

It didn’t take long for the White Wolf to realize three things;

First, there was no physical way through the yellow energy barrier.

Two, he could hear his captors through it.

Three, he still had the box to Grandmother.

For several hours, the red-cloaked girl watched him from the top of the pit, looking down at him. She sometimes said encouraging nonsense, or reassured him that no one meant to hurt him. The White Wolf was not a child, nor was he easily frightened.

He stared back at her, pacing the interior of his prison like he was, in fact, a wolf, never letting his gaze leave her face. It was an unnerving trick, and she often stuttered or stammered over her lines as he continued to stare her down.

He was the prisoner, but she was the one who was afraid.

After a while, it got darker, and she left him there, alone.

Someone else came, and the White Wolf could hear another voice, the Huntsman, talking with Scarlet Hood.

No Grandmother yet, they might be waiting for the package, or Hydra might have managed to eliminate Grandmother from the board. That wasn’t the White Wolf’s concern. He was more interested, at this very moment, as to what was in the damn package.

Even if it was only information, the White Wolf might be able to bargain his way out of the hole with the information.

Or it might be materials for a bomb.

He waited until the voices were deep in conversation, when he was most likely to be unobserved.

The package was easily opened, sorted. There were several pictures, close up and black and white, showing soldiers. A set of silvered dog tags, ancient and battered. A love token made of a braid of two colored hairs -- dark, glossy brown, and gold-touched mahogany, bound together with scarlet ribbons. A shoulder patch from a military uniform; Howling Commandos.

He sat, cross-legged, in the center of the prison and flipped through the pictures.

He barely recognized himself; it wasn’t like the White Wolf spent time looking in the mirror, but he knew his younger face. He knew the ragged cut of his hair, and the cocky, insocient smirk. The way he looked up at a man, blond and broad shouldered. The way he looked down at a woman, dainty and beautiful.

More pictures. His-- his sister? Mother?

His arm around the blond man, laughing.

The second packet of pictures--

He also knew himself; not so much because he recognized his face, twisted in agony, slack with compliance, but because he knew that place.

He knew that chair. Those technicians.

He knew…

“Hey Bucky,” someone said from outside the prison. The man from the picture, and the Scarlet Hood.

“Who the hell is _Bucky_?” The White Wolf snapped, not even knowing why he was speaking after he’d resolved not to talk to these strangers, these spies and enemies with their pictures and their scraps of his life.

“You are,” the Scarlet Hood said, giving him a strange, fae smile, sad and wistful and longing all at once. “Until they took you away from us and made you into this thing. You’re our friend.”

“You’re my mission!”

“Well, you’re not going to get to finish it,” the man said. “Come on, Bucky, you know me--”

The White Wolf snarled at them.

The Scarlet Hood waved one hand, red smoke appearing between her fingers. “I have him, Captain,” she said.

“I’d hoped this wasn’t necessary,” the man -- this Captain -- said.

“You knew that it probably was,” she replied.

The smoke wrapped around him, holding the White Wolf steady, immovable, and the Captain jumped into the pit with him, needle in one hand. He jabbed the syringe into the White Wolf’s neck.

“Go to sleep, Buck,” he said. “We’ll take care of you. The way you always took care of me.”

In the haze that was a mix of narcotics and sedatives, muscle relaxers and something else, the White Wolf couldn’t quite identify just from the taste it left in the back of his mouth, the face looked familiar.

He knew this man.

This woman,

_He knew them._

“Stevie?”

The world fell into darkness and the White Wolf was swept away with it.


End file.
